Arweave Founder Accuses Irys of Planning to Fork the Platform, AR Token Plunges

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Arweave founder Sam Williams has taken to X to allege storage solution company Irys has plans to fork his decentralized information storage firm.

“Motivated by greed”

In a post from Sunday night, Williamson claims Irys is seeking to fork Arweave in an attempt to “drop the dataset and reset the token supply.”

While Williamson says that there is an “established mechanism” within Arweave that allows for a “safe way to upgrade and fork the network,” Irys is “ignoring” it.

“This appears to be a play motivated by greed, as users have placed their trust in Irys to upload to Arweave for them,” Williamson wrote.

Censorship or self-protection?

Following the move, the Arweave token plunged by an estimated 20%, trading at a rate of just $8.90.

As a consequence, Williams instructed Irys users to switch storage providers while removing the storage project from its display, a response that will cause “significant delays” on the platform.

Shortly after William’s post, Irys released a statement of their own to X likening Williams to a tyrant and accusing Arweave of “active censorship.”

“For someone committed to building technology to protect humanity from tyrants, it’s so disappointing to see him behaving like one and attempting to deplatform Irys from Arweave, which is intended to be open-source and permissionless software,” Irys’ post read in part.

“Irys never has and never will take the choice away from users about where their data is stored,” the company’s statement continued.“Creating unconstrained access to permanent data for its users is at the core of what Irys does. We remain committed to censorship-resistant, open-source, and permissionless technology.”

Furthermore, Irys continued that it was dedicated to “developing new provenance tech” while touting to be announced “powerful new features.”

Irys faces backlash

Irys’ Sunday night statement ed a string of user criticism and widespread conversation on social media over the move’s ethicality.

“Why reset the token supply? Nasty move, ruining some good tech development in a bull market,” replied one X user.

“Do you intend to reset the token and drop the existing dataset, or don’t you? Those are easy points to respond to,” wrote another.

“Yet no answer as to why you actually need to fork Arweave,” read another reply.

Despite the controversy, Williams left the door open to Irys should they decide to change their course of action.

“We are still hoping that they see the light and decide to build their fork the right way,” Williams wrote. “We are always open to chat and to support their experiment if it is done in a way that helps the eco.”